We’ve all seen the Kinect, or at least heard about its wonders. Well, the same company that hooked up Microsoft during “Project Natal” development has showed off some pretty wonderful technology at CES last week.

It uses a 3D camera on top of your TV to let you interact with your television through gestures. To be honest, it looks a lot like any touchscreen interface you’re already used to (with similar transitions and gestures) but you just happen to be 10 feet away from the screen.

The next-gen interface lets you flip through channels and navigate the TV guide just by waving your hand around and throwing in a few pinching gestures. It made me hate my remote, if that’s any indication of how cool it is (and I love TV).

But watching TV is just the beginning. PrimeSense showed us a (somewhat bizarre) dancing implementation for the technology that lets you get jiggy with it in front of what looks a lot like Windows Media Player visualizations. The camera follows your movements and lets you throw out bursts of “energy” on screen. I didn’t really get the hang of it while I was there but it seems like an excellent technology for a rave or a group of stoned college kids.

PrimeSense even mentioned ways to let you see yourself in clothes you’d like to buy, right on the screen, and purchase them directly.

Now it’s just a matter of time until a major OEM snatches up the technology and we all find ourselves waving at the TV.

The great smartening of the idiot box continues. It was several years ago that we started seeing the first internet-connected TVs, and since then TV makers have been adding more and more slightly useful features, generally one or two per generation — it wouldn’t do to put them all out at once, of course. And while much functionality is still left to the set-top box, media player, or console, it seems inevitable that these increasingly capable display devices will integrate things we consider cutting-edge today.

Take gesture controls, for instance. Microsoft’s hit gaming peripheral, the Kinect, has made people aware of the possibilities of motion tracking and depth-sensing cameras, though it’s often hacks that really deliver on the potential. PrimeSense, who contributed much to the development of Kinect, is hoping to combine this next-gen interface with next-gen display hardware.

Speaking at GDC Europe, PrimeSense’s Amir Hoffnung described plans to supplant traditional controls, and demonstrated the flexibility of the company’s OpenNI framework by coding a basic game in under half an hour. He hopes that the open framework will help bring new and intuitive controls to increasingly powerful TVs:

“The key products in your living room are evolving. Living rooms now have connected TVs and smart TVs that can run a range of applications beyond TV shows. But all these smart TVs will need a new remote control device, because all these smart TVs need richer and deeper levels of input.”

They face stiff competition: Microsoft opened up the Kinect SDK in June after much unofficial hackery made it clear they had a potential development gold mine in hand. And Although PrimeSense has worked with Asus to produce a Kinect-like device, it’s much more expensive and not quite up to snuff.

That they’re not Microsoft gives them an advantage, though. OpenNI is open-source, and while of course that doesn’t mean it’s a free for all, it’s more likely that a company like Samsung or LG, for instance, will try playing with it. Microsoft is likely already exploring ways to expand Kinect on its own: no less than Gates himself talked up the applications in desktop computing.

Hoffnung also mentions OnLive being brought to TVs. While many are still skeptical of the service, its potential and the technical accomplishments associated are difficult to deny. If you were to combine OnLive tech with some basic casual gaming, controlled by a gesture-sensing webcam, it could simply explode. Play a little match-three or farm sim during commercials, or while waiting for your rented movie to cache? You better believe there are a tens of millions of couch potatoes who would jump at the opportunity. Well, perhaps not jump, but they would at least wave their hands around, and that’s all it takes.

This is all fairly distant speculation, though, and it depends very much on what TV makers bring to their devices. HD webcams for video chat integration, and a little more horsepower behind the screen (you need a good amount of cache and a bit of specialized hardware to do hardcore streaming and gesture tech), and PrimeSense’s dream could become an everyday experience.

If it seems like everybody is starting their own virtual world, it is because they are. A report put out today by Virtual Worlds Management tracks $161 million put into 14 virtual-world investments during the second quarter of 2008. In the first quarter there was even more activity, with $184 million put into 23 virtual worlds and supporting technology companies. That brings the total this year alone to $345 million across 37 deals. Some notable deals (you can see the full lists by clicking on the last two links above):

Second Quarter 2008

Grockit——————-MMO Learning Game——-$8 million——-Integral Capital and Benchmark

Nurien Software——–3D social networking——-$15 million——-Northern Light, Globespan, NEA

PrimeSense————-Gestural Interface———-$20.4 million—–Led by Canaan Partners

Realtime Worlds———-MMOG Developer———$50 million——–Maverick Capital, NEA

Stanford Parallel —-Parallel Processing————–$6 million——-Sun Microsystems, AMD, Nvidia, IBM,
Processing Lab for Virtual Worlds HP, and Intel

Turbine———————-MMOG——————-$40 million————–Time Warner and GGV Capital

First Quarter 2008

9You———–Virtual World/Casual Games——$100 million——–Temasek Holdings

Dizzywood —————Youth World————— $1 million——-Shelby Bonnie, Charles River Ventures

EveryScape————— Mirror World————–$7 million——–Dace, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Fix8 ———————- Avatar Content————$2 million ——–SK Telecom

Gizmoz ——————- Avatar Creation ———- $6.5 million——-DoCoMo Capital, ngi group

iOpener ——————–Mixed Reality ————-$6 million———Triangle Venture Capital

Sparkplay Media——Casual MMO with Games—–$4.25 million—–Redpoint, Prism Ventureworks

Unisfair ——————–Virtual Events Platform—–$10 million——-Norwest, Sequoia Capital

Imagine the Wii with 3D vision. The console would understand if you were behind an object and images would move accordingly and you could reach out with your hand to “touch” items on the screen. The technology is real and it works and PrimeSense, a small Israeli company, is trying to release it into the wild.

PrimeSense, which just closed a $20 million funding round led by Canaan Partners with lead investors Gemini Israel Funds (who also provided the seed funding) and Genesis Partners. The company is moving out of development into sales.


The system basically uses a 3D camera to see objects in space. The result is a completely immersive experience without controllers, something some gamers have been looking for for years.

Will you ever buy PrimeSense controllers for your PS3? Probably not. I suspect they’ll sell the technology before going into production simply because the big boys will be able to integrate it more fully into their consoles rather than a peripheral. Gaming is a hard industry to crack and this, unlike the Eyetoy for the PlayStation series, sounds a bit complex.

Look for PrimeSense on a console game box near you sometime soon — I wouldn’t hold your breath, however, because they promised working hardware in 2006 — and/or look for a sale of IP. Also look for kids waving their arms manically at big screen televisions.

Imagine the Wii with 3D vision. The console would understand if you were behind an object and images would move accordingly and you could reach out with your hand to “touch” items on the screen. The technology is real and it works and PrimeSense, a small Israeli company, is trying to release it into the wild.

PrimeSense, which just closed a $20 million funding round led by Canaan Partners with lead investors Gemini Israel Funds (who also provided the seed funding) and Genesis Partners. The company is moving out of development into sales.

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